Cannes: Weinstein Company Acquires Fest Film 'Dragon (Wu Xia)'

In what amounts to The Weinstein Company’s second acquisition of a 2011 Cannes Official Selection film, TWC has acquired distribution rights toDragon (Wu Xia), the Chinese martial arts noir film directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan. TWC has acquired most world distribution rights outside of Asia and French-speaking Europe. The film premieres at Cannes on May 14. TWC also optioned remake rights to the film.

This comes after Deadline revealed that TWC is closing a deal to distribute U.S. and multiple international territories on The Artist, a black-and-white silent film that is written and produced by Michel Hazanavicius. The picture premieres in competition on Sunday.

Set in the late Qing Dynasty, Liu (Donnie Yen) is a papermaker, leading a simple life with his wife Ayu (Tang Wei) and their two sons. Into their remote village comes Detective Xu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who is investigating the deaths of two bandits during a robbery. Xu quickly realizes that the incident in question was no ordinary botched robbery — and his dogged inquiry threatens to dredge up the dark secrets of Liu’s buried past, threatening not only Liu and his family but the entire village.

Said Harvey Weinstein: “Peter Chan is a true artist and with WU XIA he has created a dream project, combining two of my favorite genres: film noir and martial arts. Peter has been a friend for more than 10 years I could not be happier to be working with him on this film.”